FRED Entertainment

Tag: Twilight

  • Win TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE on DVD!

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    In conjunction with Summit Entertainment, we’re giving away five (5) copies each of TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE on DVD.

    Contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, December 15th.

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    The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.

  • Soapbox: Lackluster

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    Lackluster

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    One advertising slogan that never really applied to me was “If you only see one movie this month…”. I spend a lot of time in the cinema, and it’d be a very rare turn of events that would lead me to not go to see a movie at least once a week. Going to the cinema with such regularity means that I get to see everything that I want to see and I get to see some films that I don’t necessarily want to see, but am willing to take a chance on. And now, here we are again almost at the end of “Blockbuster Season” and I haven’t really been awesomed by many films.

    As I write this, there is some small hope left in the Season, hope that we might go from somewhat-lacklustre to absolute-blockbuster. Inception went on general release last week in most countries around the world and it impressed the hell out of me. So far, it’s been the saving grace of the summer. Toy Story 3 went on general release in Ireland and the UK on the 19th of July (yes, it went on general release on a Monday for some stupid reason) and is riding high on stellar reviews from America where the movie has been out for quite some time. The A-Team and The Karate Kid have both yet to be released here and both have gotten very mixed reviews but still carry with them some small promise of salvation, but that hope is very small. I think that when all is said and done, Inception and Toy Story 3 could be the winners this year with a special mention for How To Train Your Dragon. That movie was released in March of this year, so it was probably too early to be considered a summer blockbuster, but hands down it’s been my favourite movie of the year and probably my favourite animated movie of all time. And as such, I’m allowing it for consideration in this column.

    Dependant on what part of the world you’re reading this in, your experience of the blockbuster season could well be different to mine. In Eastern Europe, The A-Team went on release weeks ago and Toy Story 3 is out but Inception is still a week away. In this age of instant information when a movie can live or die on the strength of reviews, there’s still a huge discrepancy in the release dates of certain movies. There was a time when I was really looking forward to seeing The Last Airbender, but after reading consistently awful reviews from both viewers and critics in America, I’ll be giving that movie a wide miss. The practice of staggering releases around the world also has a hugely detrimental effect when it comes to internet piracy. There are certain people who will want to see a big blockbuster movie as soon as it’s available, no matter how it’s available. If I felt a burning need to see The A-Team before the 28th of July, I could very easily have a good quality digital copy of the movie sitting on my hard drive by now and let’s face it, if I have the movie on my hard drive there’s very little chance that I’d pay to see it on a bigger screen upon it’s cinematic release in Ireland. But illegalness isn’t my style, and I enjoy going to the cinema far too much, so the closest I’ll come to piracy is a Pirates Of The Caribbean marathon over the course of a weekend at home.

    Looking at the listings for this week at my local cinema, it strikes me that there’s a smaller choice of movies now than there is at almost any other time during the year. I think that part of the reason for this is that studios are afraid that “smaller” movies will be steamrolled over by the bigger blockbuster movies. But another reason for it is 3D. At present, Shrek Forever After and Toy Story 3D account for four movies even though they are obviously only two. Having to accommodate 3D versions of movies, and not even the summer blockbusters, means that the movie will take up two spaces on a schedule and that just means that someone has to lose out. And the “someone” who loses out is usually the audience.

    The only movie with which I can compare the 3D version to the 2D version is How To Train Your Dragon. I got to see that movie three times in the cinema and the second viewing was in 3D, due to scheduling more than any desire to sit in the cinema wearing a set of plastic glasses over my own prescription glasses. And I have to say that I really didn’t notice any discernable difference between the two versions. Though I think the movie is pretty much perfect either way. I think and I hope that 3D will come and go as it has before, as its main purpose at the moment sees to be purely to clog up cinema schedules or delay the release of movies. Joss Whedon’s new movie, Cabin in Then Woods would have been released by now were it not for the studio’s desire to have the film released in 3D.

    But 3D still holds little sway over the world of DVD/Blu Ray and home entertainment. I can’t help but wonder if four or five months from now when the blockbuster movies are released on disc how we’ll be looking back at this summer? Predators was a worthy sequel but didn’t quite live up to its initial promise. Shrek Forever After tried to breath new life into the franchise but did more sucking than blowing. Prince Of Persia tried to be Pirates Of The Caribbean on sand but didn’t have any of the charm of the pirate movies. Iron Man 2 set the standard high early in the season, but couldn’t help but suffer from comparisons to the universally loved original movie. Twilight movies are just horrible, and send the worst possible message to it’s target audience of teenage girls. How To Train Your Dragon would be the standard bearer if it had been released a little later in the year, but it did have the advantage of being able to enjoy a very lengthy run in the cinema sue to it’s release before the lacklustre blockbusters.

    So here we stand, near the end of another blockbuster season with only Inception to hold aloft as the example of what a blockbuster should be. It’s an unusual position to be in, given that Inception is also the smartest film of the year so far or indeed of the last couple of years. I’ll be going to see Toy Story 3 later this week and I have high hopes for it. Maybe high hopes are dangerous, but it’s high hopes that keep us going. And more importantly… keep us going to the cinema.

    – Simon Fitzgerald

  • Soapbox: Adaptation

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    The Tricky Question

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    Sorry for the lack of columns recently, but a bout of illness and a rush at work has meant that most other things have fallen by the wayside. But I am here once again, ready to tackle subjects relating to books and literature. And boy do I have a good one for my triumphant return: Is there such a thing as a GOOD book to film adaptation?

    People tend to just accept that a book will always trump a film based on the book. The justification is that a film has to condense a lot of the content to fit it into a two hour movie and this in turn dilutes the story. Then you have people arguing that an actor/actress assigned to certain roles don’t marry together with the descriptions given in the book of that character. Or, and this is even worse, that the scriptwriters add in scenes that didn’t exist in the original text.

    And online lists of good books turned into bad movies, or bad books turned into worse films or good films that made amazing films have been compiled and argued over for years.

    I have to admit, I have complained about all of these in the past. As a book lover, I am precious about what I read. I devour it, spend days immersing myself in the world on the page before me, emote with the characters and have that same feeling of closure they do at the novel’s end. So when a book has been “destroyed” by Hollywood writers, I can get a bit uppity about it.

    Currently I am reading Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, which as the majority will know was released as a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese earlier this year. Although I am enjoying the book, I saw the film first and will forever picture DiCaprio as Teddy Daniels, which is another of my Hollywood making books into movies bugbears.

    Anyway, one thing I noticed when reading Shutter Island was how close to the text the movie’s writers had stuck. Paragraphs of dialogue had been carefully transferred over to the screenplay, scenes lovingly retained and the general tone of the story complemented. And this filled me with hope that there were some good adaptations out there.

    The early Harry Potter books definitely fall into this category. Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets were practically copied verbatim, with Prisoner of Azkaban moving slightly away from JK Rowling’s original offering. However, by Goblet of Fire, the size of the novels had increased substantially and this meant that the film’s writers had to cut out chunks of story, raising angry protests from fans claiming they had “taken out the best bits”. And by Order of the Phoenix the writers were including scenes not featured in the books.

    Part of the problem that writers have in translating novels onto the screen is that there isn’t the same structure. Books include characters’ internal thoughts and feelings and often have a narrative voice running throughout. A film (on the whole) can’t do that, so there are often internal monologues which are chopped by editors.

    Although hated by a lot of people, the first Twilight movie stayed loyal to the books. In the second movie, a lot was changed because in the books Edward Cullen disappears for about 400 pages and the screenplay writers were no doubt fearful about what a room full of Twi-hards would do when they discovered Robert Pattinson missing for about two hours of the movie. And this is another reason for changes to the story – a character minor in a series of books becomes popular, so the movies’ writers concoct new storylines that expand the role.

    And although a comic and not a novel, Sin City was amazing in it’s dedication to stay true to the original artwork and dialogue. There were points in the film that I recognised as exact copies of panels from the comics, which really blew my mind. I can’t help but feel that it helps immensely if the director is a true fan of the work they are recreating on screen.

    However, on the flipside of this is the horrendously bad reimagings. In particular I am thinking of Jurassic Park, where characters who die in the first book survive until the end of the third film. Park creator John Hammond is turned into a grandfatherly twinkly eyed old so-and-so, as opposed to the money-grabbing egotistical character of the books. Many scenes (particularly action scenes) were cut, and it dumbs down the paelentological jargon used in the book.

    Other adaptations seem to take merely the name of the book and little in the way of story (yes, I am looking at you Fever Pitch). The Nick Hornby novel was about football in England and it spoke of the agony of being a fan of a sports team and watching your team lose. The Farrelly Brothers took it, added in that idiot Jimmy Fallon, turned football into baseball and removed any and all of the soul in the story. You never understood truly what being a fan meant to Fallon’s character.

    So, as to whether movie adaptations of books can ever be very good, the answer is yes, but more often that not they won’t. There is too much compression of the story, distortion of characters and studio interference that will often sully even the most loving of projects by screenplay writers.

    – Katy Gordon

  • Soapbox: Who Defanged The Vampires?

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    Who Defanged The Vampires?

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    I read a lot of books during the course of a year (2009 saw me work my way through over 30 of them) and not all of them are great. I do not pretend to be an academic when it comes to the analysis of novels – although I loved English at school, that was always the part of the class I dreaded. And I don’t think you SHOULD analyse books, they exist to create a different world, offer new perspectives and to invoke feeling and emotion within the reader.

    But, having said that, my job is to do just that!! But be warned, anyone expecting high brow, intellectual breakdowns of the subtext of the latest Lionel Shriver offering should probably go elsewhere. My opinions are more of the “that bitch couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag”. And if anyone notices any traces of bitterness creeping in, that’s because there is. I am a would-be novelist trying to fit writing around a career and running my home.

    Anyway, onto the subject at hand…

    I remember when vampires were scary and the mere utterance of the word “Dracula” could have you checking over your shoulder to make sure someone wasn’t trying to drain you via your throat. Where readers made sure their windows were firmly closed before going to bed, lest a vampire in bat form flies in and catches you sleeping. Images of the immortal who could only be slain by a stake through the heart or decapitation used to plague my nightmares for weeks after reading.

    In short, vampires were bad-ass. The amazing thing was that they didn’t have a conscience, so weren’t held back by the morals and social norms of the day – they were free to feast and raise hell without thought for consequences or those around them. The vampire lifestyle was truly a pursuit of hedonism. And a person with no limitations and a lust for human blood is truly a terrifying concept, especially when they have supernatural powers and incredible physicality.

    And they were sexy. Partly because of the aforementioned bad-assery, but mainly because they were written that way. Vampires use their good looks, pale skin and often hypnotic eyes to attract unsuspecting victims to get close enough to take a bite out of. And the sexuality of vampires is tied into the lack of concern for societal conformity or moral code. Bisexuality, multiple partners and other sordid sex acts are alluded to or graphically detailed in vampire books. And it’s not just a modern concept, the sex of vampires goes back centuries.

    In 1872, a book called “Carmilla” written by Sheridan Le Fanu depicted a woman targeted by a lesbian vampire who adopts a new persona and stays with the victim’s family, transforming at night and feasting on her while she sleeps. This book served as a prototype for future lesbian vampire offerings, although it wasn’t hugely overt in it’s sexualising of the situation.

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    But surely the quintessential vampire novel has to be Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which has served as inspiration for nearly every vampire novel that followed it, the good, the bad and the ugly.

    Written by Irish author Bram Stoker at the end of the 1800s, Dracula is a book that has been broken down and reassessed for as long as it has existed. And for good reason. It is has the elements nearly everyone would associate with a vampire story.

    It is sexy: Johnathan Harker is targeted in the night by three buxom and sexually available women, and the hypnotic charms of Dracula hint that there is a supernatural draw to these creatures.

    It is scary: People being attacked in the night by unknown assailants, Dracula stalks his prey, watching them when they think they are alone. He is pretty much like a shadow.

    It is balanced: Dracula is not an emotional being. It is not part of his make up. He is an animal, who doesn’t show feeling for his prey. No, the emotion of the story comes from the humans, who mourn, get angry and seek revenge. And that is how it should be.

    But now we have a different breed of vampires, who brood, who don’t eat human flesh, who love human women and who seem to have had their fangs removed at the same time as their balls.

    And do you know who I blame for this? Not Stephenie Meyer, who while she has made this situation worse by creating a book so sweet and puppy dog-ish that millions of teens were bound to fall under it’s spell, didn’t set the trend. Not Joss Whedon, who, while I adore him and everything he has done, created a good looking vampire sullied by a soul who did the “dark and broody” thing to death. Not the myriad writers who have tried the old formula of love between two people with different backgrounds (a post-mortem Romeo and Juliet, if you will).

    Nope, to look for the culprit, I have to go back to the 1970s to Anne Rice. Yep, the one and only. The woman responsible for Interview with the Vampire and the rest of the Vampire Chronicles. She created characters who stop to think about what they are doing, the effects the actions have and bemoan the life they have. She tries and affixes her own morals to a tale that really shouldn’t have any (except for the whole if you are bad, bad things will happen to you which comes when good invariably triumphs over evil).

    Lestat, while on the surface is a man who enjoys being undead and all that that entails, is actually lonely and often questions the right and wrong of his existence. He tries to defend himself to people who question his actions or motives.

    And in Memnoch the Devil it gets downright ludicrous when Lestat helps ensure no bloodshed during a battle between rival factions.

    Let me repeat that: A VAMPIRE MAKES SURE THERE ARE NO DEATHS IN A FIGHT.

    This is unfathomable. Dracula would have ensured that all people on both sides were slain and he had enough time to drain them all before making his escape. That is the way it should be.

    Stephenie Meyer doesn’t even give the readers anything that resembles a traditional vampire. In interviews, the author (and I do use that term loosely, because although the idea was reasonable, the execution was miserable) freely admits she did no research on vampires while writing. That’s how we end up with vampires who don’t have sex, don’t drink human blood and SPARKLE IN THE BLOODY SUNLIGHT!

    Everyone knows that vamps dust, not sparkle, Stephenie.

    And instead of at least giving him a thirst for sex, the writer decides to make him chaste and unwilling to have sex before marriage.

    (I must interject here in the interests of full disclosure: I have read the Twilight saga a few times. I have the first two films on Blu Ray. This is not because of the vampire aspect, in as much as I want to sex Rob Pattinson and my inner teen is a fat chick who wishes she could get the hot guy. But these books almost use the vampire angle as an incidental, it is a love story more than anything else. For vamps, I have much better reading material.)

    And alas, the commercial success of the Twilight saga, which has broken previous records for number of books sold on opening night, means that inevitably carbon copies will flood our bookshelves, just like what happened post-Da Vinci Code.

    Anne Rice has a lot to answer for, and I don’t just mean for turning Lestat into a literary vessel for her to spout her own crap about life and being famous and such. She has led the way for a slew of watered down, under-nourished and wimpy vampires who I as a mere human wouldn’t be scared to take on.

    What we need is a renaissance of the traditional vampire: The sexy, scary beast that turns into a bat, sneaks into your room, puts you under a hypnotic charm and sucks the life out of you. What we don’t need is any more limp wristed, human loving, guilt feeling pussies who would rather cuddle than bite a girl’s neck!

    –Katy Gordon

  • Trailer Park: Daniel Cudmore & Charlie Bewley of TWILIGHT: NEW MOON

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    I was able to sit down for a couple of years and pump out a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

    Check out my new column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on TWITTER under the name: Stipp

    Daniel Cudmore and Charlie Bewley of Twilight: New Moon – Interview

    I realize this is the backhanded way of going about introducing these two actors in what is one the most hyped releases of 2009 but their appearance in the last third of the film’s running time is the best part of the movie.

    Really, by the time Edward is thrashed by a very thick and mean Daniel Cudmore who plays part of the vampire royalty in Stephenie Meyer’s series of books about vampires who sparkle in the sun you are just aching for something to happen. The promise of vampiric strength is never really examined at all until we see Daniel provide what is the most delightful moments of the movie. The Volturi, led by the rapturous Michael Sheen who just shines in a role that could have been camped up in keeping with the books themselves, are not only mysterious but actually deliver on the promise of being that community’s judge, jury and executioner. While it would have been delicious to have seen more of this clan it was nonetheless a fantastic experience to sit down with Cudmore and newcomer Charlie Bewley and talk about their roles in this new film.

    From the attention, adoration, and scrutiny of teen fans, to knowing how to act when you’re being filmed in slow-motion, to not getting a comp of your own action figure this interview was, at the very least, rewarding to participate in when you consider how casual the two of them treated this experience.

    (Special thanks to The Massie Twins of GoneWithTheTwins.com who provided the transcription below)

    new-moon-poster-2_volturi_500The Massie Twins: How are you enjoying Arizona? You came here for the one day out of the year when it’s cold.

    Daniel Cudmore: I know. It’s supposed to be summer all year here, and it’s a little chilly. It’s better than Vancouver now, which is all rain. I can’t complain.

    MT: How was the mall tour yesterday?

    DC: The mall tour was wild. They’ve been very, very cool. You see these people who are so passionate about these great books and they haven’t even seen what we’ve done with the characters that we play. They’ve got this blind faith and it’s flattering but also nerve-wracking. You hope you’ve done all your homework.

    MT: How many have you gone through so far?

    Charlie Bewley: We’ve been to Philly, Seattle and this is the final leg of the tour. They’ve got their actors in the field right now.

    Christopher Stipp: Usually as an actor you say “it’s just a job, this is what I do,” but this has its own little sphere of”¦

    CB: Yeah, this is an amazing thing to be involved in. As my first real project, it’s great because there is so much extracurricular obligation. I’ve just signed a contract for next year to do a bunch of appearances. For such a small but great role there are so many things you can do away from the film to keep yourself busy.

    MT: Were you guys familiar with the novels before you got involved?

    DC: I’d heard some rumblings on the internet when they were casting the first one that I should go out and audition. I didn’t know the world that well. I knew of it, but as soon as I was in the process of auditioning, I sort of delved into it and educated myself on it. I can’t say enough about Stephenie Meyer’s writing.

    MT: Had you seen the first movie?

    CB: I watched the first movie on the day of my audition. The 27th of January I believe. In an acting sense I had prepared for the role, but I find it’s always useful to watch the films. I had to download the thing because I couldn’t get to the cinema that early in the morning. There’s a very definite style to the way she interprets this world. It’s ethereal yet it’s real.

    87979328SG018_TWILIGHT_FAN_That probably has a lot to do with the way it was shot ““ very dingy, very overcast. The first film is a cult film and when it was finished I had an idea of what I needed to do ““ take that forward and be this Demetri guy. New Moon is very much a Hollywood blockbuster movie and an action film. It should bring a whole new demographic to the Twilight world. I don’t think anyone really understands how big this is going to be. After a week you’re going to get some spare seats in theaters and they’re going to get filled up with guys looking for a good action movie.

    MT: Can you guys give us a quick intro into your characters and the Volturi?

    CB: Volturi are brought into this because of what happens to Edward. He, very selfishly (the more I think about it, the more angry I get), goes out and tries to dispose of himself. He goes to the Volturi and wants them to kill him. Volturi are the only people who can kill him. He thinks Bella has committed suicide, and”¦ you know the story. But they want his powers and want to take him on board. He says he’ll go out into the world and screw up the whole vampire nation by exposing himself ““ so he puts his whole family at risk, and everyone else in the vampire kingdom. Aro sends us out to bring him back. We make and enforce the laws.

    MT: What are the special powers that each of you have?

    CB: I’m a tracker, very much like James’ character in the first one, but my tracking abilities are unlimited which makes me a much more formidable threat, which you’ll see in Breaking Dawn. Demetri gets the standard skill set of being immensely strong, fast, aesthetically pleasing and highly dangerous. I am very much the “good cop” where as Felix is”¦

    DC: Each character gets an extra power, whether it be a tracking ability or mind power, but my character isn’t given a specific power except that he’s just brutally vicious and strong. There isn’t a vampire at his same level and he knows this, so he can have fun with tearing apart other vampires. He knows what he can do and enjoys the heightened strength.

    CB: I think that goes for the whole of the Volturi. We’re a very arrogant bunch.

    CS: Is it ever difficult to play a superhero type character? Do you ever start laughing after you’ve read a script before you sit down and think, “okay, I’ve got to play this straight. I’m a vampire, I’ve got these superpowers.” Is there every a moment, at least initially, where it’s funny?

    DC: For me, sometimes you do get a character who on the surface, you’re like “how am I going to do this?” But you break it down and find the emotion, to the most minimal base. How do I connect. What can I bring to make this real for me. I start with a basic foundation and build it up from there. Everything else is just extra. You make it real to you and everything else goes with it. It doesn’t feel campy. You’ve identified with the emotion. You’re there and everything else builds up the character.

    charlie_bewley_2662205CB: I think if it weren’t for the fact that this is such a huge, phenomenal success and everyone wants to be a vampire right now, then there might be cause for going, “okay, I’m a vampire. This is weird.” But I never got to that stage. I’m a badass vampire! I call my friends at home and say, “Guess what! I’m a vampire!” When I go out onto the street I don’t act like an actor ““ I think it’s the same for vampires. They are badass vampires, so they don’t have to go out and act like it. These are real people with superhuman abilities and idiosyncrasies that come with being a vampire. Yes I eat human flesh, yes this, yes that. We don’t carry it around like some sort of a tag. Especially the Cullens, they’re real people ““ that’s why so many people can get into it. When the primal urges come out, you have to act vicious and aggressive. That’s when you can show the vampire side. I’m looking forward to that because it’s a massive contrast to the charming Demetri that I’ve played in this one.

    MT: What’s the tone like on the set? Is anyone a prankster? Is Kristin Stewart incredibly eccentric?

    CB: Not really. (laughs) There’s not that much to talk about behind-the-scenes. It’s an incredibly professional set. It’s a very high-stakes film with some huge industry talent. There’s not that much room for a prankster running around putting whoopee cushions on Aro’s chair. Case in point, on the set, Chris Weitz, who is normally very calm ““ we were doing a take and some extras were talking behind the set. Chris lost it. When the nicest guy in the room loses it, you know he’s angry. Off set, there’s some great characters. It was really nice meeting all the Cullens and putting personalities to faces. There’s some nice people, but I wouldn’t say there’s a guy running around pulling people’s pants down.

    MT: What’s the craziest or coolest thing a fan has done so far?

    DC: Wow. Last night this little girl was crying. It was the most terrible moment of her life mixed with the most emotionally charged, happy moment. It was such a strange feeling. I looked up and”¦

    CB: Yeah, she could have gone any way (laughs)

    DC: She like almost fainted, but I touched her hand and she wobbled away. It was the strangest thing, but it was really, really cool.

    CB: It’s really hard to understand. We must be like the gods were to the Greek peasants back in the day (laughs).

    aro_caius_alec_volturi_new_moon_twilightDC: (laughs) I don’t see myself like that!

    CB: (laughs) I’m trying to fathom it in my head, the power status there is between fans and movie stars that could justify the extreme female behavior. Something I can’t get my head around.

    DC: And then you go back home and your buddies tear you apart. (laughs) They instantly put you back in your place. It’s hugely flattering, especially when they haven’t seen what you’ve done. It’s also great to have your friends and family knock the pegs right out from underneath you.

    CS: Last year Taylor [Lautner] was sitting where you are now. Before that, no one knew who he was. Now he’s on the cover of US Weekly. What’s it like to go from 0 ““ 100 mph in six months? Are you prepared to be in the same situation with the attention?

    CB: I don’t know the answer to that.

    DC: I very briefly got to meet and chat with him, but the kid is smart and he’s got a good head on his shoulders. It’s just part of the business and I think he’s done a great job with it. Are you ever ready for this kind of thing? I don’t think so, but if you know who you are, then you’re fine. You’re the product and you promote it like anything else.

    MT: Who would win in a fight: Felix or Colossus?

    DC: (laughs) Oh man. I think it would”¦ I don’t want to upset anybody. I think it would go on for a very long time and it would be a very cool fight scene. And it would cost a lot of money if they wanted to do that in a movie.

    MT: Are you getting your own Twilight action figures, and if so, will you own them?

    CB: Damn right! That’s immortalization! This is stage one on my way to my statue! (laughs) We did a publicity day, which we missed for New Moon ““ which is why you’re not seeing us on all the paraphernalia going around ““ but we got to go to Italy. We went up on this mini stage and there was some technological setup that took our front, side, profile. And someone was like, “this is for your action figure.” And at that point I was like”¦ Wicked! Sweet! (laughs)

    DC: I got one for Colossus, but I didn’t get one. Those guys didn’t send me one, and I’m upset. I want you guys to get this out here and have whoever made those things to send me one.

    CB: Just go buy one!

    DC: I’m not going to buy one. It’s bull!

    CB: I’m going to go to a store and pick one up off the shelf and walk to the cashier and say, “that’s me! That is me.”

    DC: Why couldn’t they have just sent me one so I could have it!

    MT: Have you guys seen the final cut of the movie?

    DC: No. Monday’s the premiere. I’m really excited. It’s going to be huge. Sometimes I don’t want to see it before the premiere.

    CB: I’m on the other side ““ I wish I’d seen it. I’ve got like three agents coming with me and they’re going to be watching me. That’s pressure. I know I’ve made some pretty weird choices in the film. I don’t know if they’re caught on camera or not. Here’s actor naïveté for you:  It’s when we rip apart the vampire and Aro’s got the head and we had to film the bit where we have an arm each. We’ve just ripped his arm off and I played the scene in my head and I said “This is one of those slow motion scenes, massively dramatic.” So I thought, “I’ve got to play it in slow motion.” (Charlie acts out ripping apart a vampire in super slow-mo). And I forgot you do everything in real time and they slow it down afterwards. (laughs) So I’m in the car at night with Dan and I’m like, “Shit. I did that scene in slow motion! Was I supposed to? NO!”

    DC: I was looking over thinking, “Is he in slow motion? What did he have for lunch?” (laughs)

    MT: Well hopefully they can speed it up to put it back into real time.

    CB: I can picture someone up at 2:00 in the morning correcting my screw-up. (laughs)

  • Trailer Park: TWILIGHT Interview

    header_stipp.jpg

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

    Does anyone have any idea how much people are willing to do anything to get close to those involved in TWILIGHT?

    Stores have been shut down, cops have been called in, teenage girls are crying at the mere mention of Robert Pattinson’s name, crowds have not packed and swelled malls to the kind of degree not seen since the last Menudo tour circa 1985 and some of those involved could not be more laid back and chill about it all.

    Edi Gathegi who plays Laurent, Rachelle Lefevre who plays Victoria and Taylor Lautner who plays Jacob Black could not have been more removed or reflective on the entire experience. They look at it with a bit of comedy, genuine amazement and are sanguine about how they feel towards any subsequent sequels.

    When I met them at the Valley Ho in Scottsdale, Arizona the film was about 2 weeks away from dropping, they were slated for an appearance at the local Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall where 750 teenagers paid $30 a pop for a t-shirt and a ticket that would allow them to get close enough for a photo and autograph. And I understand that. I won’t make fun of these people, although it’s awfully tempting when you see some of the nutters in line, but the real sports are the actors who put on a smiley face and braved the insanity.

    Note bene: This interview was conducted before me even seeing a frame of film or even reading a page of Arizona native Meyer’s book. So, keep your snarky comments to yourself. We join this interview with Rachelle and I talking, oddly enough, about how I once came from Chicago…

    RACHELLE LEFEVRE: You are? I’m a Bears fan.

    CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Nice. Cubs fan?

    LEFEVRE: No. Not a baseball person.

    CS: Then I’m done with you for the rest of the interview.

    LEFEVRE: Hey, I’m from Montreal, OK and I was an Expo’s fan until the 1994 strike ruined us on our way to win a World Series and we’ve never recovered and then we lost our team because Jeffrey Loria, who’s an American, bought up the team and sold it off for parts like it was art. So I do not watch baseball anymore. I am scared for life.

    EDI GATHEGI: That was the Expo’s?

    LEFEVRE: Yea. Hard to respect the team that played the second half of their last season in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

    CS: Regarding the film I know Pattinson is making an appearance in Chicago tonight, actually, and there are cops are being brought in to get ready

    LEFEVRE: They canceled the event in San Francisco.

    CS: I heard that. Did you guys know going in what you were getting yourselves into?

    TAYLOR LAUTNER: No, not really. The first time we realized the potential of this thing I think was ComiCon and our first night in Seattle was a pretty big taste of ComiCon again. I definitely was not expecting anything near what it was and they were just great. The fans are very supportive and we are very lucky to have them.

    GATHEGI: They are about as enthusiastic as you can get right up to the brink before they start breaking each others noses.

    LAUTNER: Exactly.

    (Laughs)

    GATHEGI: I think I lost a little bit of hearing though all that stuff.

    CS: I was actually there at ComiCon during all that. I only had a baseline understanding of the book series because Stephenie Miller is from here. I knew she was a local author but I had no idea that young girls, young people, really have attached themselves to this book series. As you guys were doing the film, what did you come to understand why young people are so connected to the story?

    GATHEGI: I think there are a lot of questions that come up when you are in high school and are a young adult. There’s a lot of teen angst, forbidden love, like the whole Romeo and Juliet story, she can’t really be with him because they are different species but they’ve fallen in love with each other and what do…does she want to turn, live the rest of her life as a vampire… and I think Stephenie does a wonderful job painting these characters in such a truthful and honest way.

    She does.

    She sets up our world as we know it. It’s our world and then she starts to justify or asks all the questions of how vampires could possibly exist in our world the way we would naturally. And then she has an answer for each question and you think, oh my god, this is a world that could possibly exist.

    LEFEVRE: Totally plausible.

    GATHEGI: Totally plausible. And I think people are rooting for their relationship as they read and it’s just so interesting and intense, it’s engaging and a pretty easy read so people fly though the book and attach themselves pretty quickly.

    CS: A lot has been made of vampires lately. True Blood on HBO has gone gangbusters. People love a good vampire story. Why? I think was fascinated just as a boy growing up with vampires in general, but it seems to be when you do the property right as in True Blood right now, TWILIGHT, from what everyone is saying…If you look at it from the right way it could just be huge. Why do people gravitate to vampires the way they do?

    LEFEVRE: We’ve been talking amongst ourselves about this too and there is certainly something that there are certain genre’s that just appeal to us for certain reasons at certain times and so vampires have always been around, they just keep coming in an out of fashion.

    But we are fascinated by one monster group at a time it seems in the zeitgeist. The thing that strikes me now about the vampire methodology, like True Blood and in Stephenie’s books, the genre, the methodology is being turned on it’s head. From what I’ve seen of True Blood it seems that Alan Ball is using it. It’s almost politically subversive. He’s using it to make arguments about the nature of humanity in a really interesting way about the nature of prejudice and it’s like he’s posited them as this minority group facing human challenges, which I find really interesting and the thing I find that I love about what Stephenie does is that it’s such an incredible metaphor for particularly at a young age but also like the Romeo and Juliet thing, for something that stands between two people being together.

    Whether that’s species in this case, or a class system, or whether it’s different religions, there a million reasons still today why we can’t all just be one group and so it highlights our differences in an extraordinary way. So, I think that’s one of the fascinations in society right now, why vampires are big. It allows us to ask those questions in a way that’s harmless because we are not asking about ourselves, we are asking about a hypothetical world. Sorry, I just rambled.

    (Laughs)

    CS: You’re right. I think we’re done here.

    GATHEGI: [Pointing at Taylor] He’s got nothing to contribute on the subject because he will be a werewolf.

    LEFEVRE: Why do we love werewolves so much?

    LAUTNER: Because they’re hot.

    (Laughs)

    GATHEGI: Literally. 180 degrees.

    CS: Well, to that point, Taylor and Edi, what did you bring to your own parts? You are asked to play a werewolf and vampire, respectively, and you are asked to step into these roles acting in disguise. You are essentially playing a werewolf and vampire for a vast majority of your screen time without ever brandishing scary teeth, hair all over your body…

    GATHEGI: Stephenie does a lot of the work for us with the rules of her methodology ““ there are no fangs, there are no garlic, no crosses. We go out in the daytime, but just can’t be seen in the direct sun or our skin will glitter. It doesn’t hurt us. It’s not like we have to be in a coffin during the day so a lot of the work is done for us and for me I just thought what would it be like to not ever sleep? What would it be like if I didn’t have to breathe? Like those simple things we do without thinking.

    A vampire has to consciously think to blink. Because humans blink naturally. Vampires don’t have to. So to appear human, vampires have to think about those things. So for me it was the stiller I could be, the more undead I would be. So it was an exercise in the economy in movement. I almost needed to do less. But it was serious concentration. Then on top of that not to play vampire, I play this character, this being that was once human and what were his interests when he was human and what are they now that he turned? I thought it would be interesting if he was a contemporary of some great figure in the 1700’s when he was turned and I picked St. George, this Renaissance man. He was a fencer, a very regal character and I thought what if they were friends so that gave him his gate so then I just added vampire on top of that.

    LAUTNER: It’s hard because I haven’t been transformed into a werewolf yet. I transform in the middle of the second book in the series. So, basically all I had to do is pretend which isn’t hard to have a huge crush on Kristin Stewart.

    (Laughs)

    That’s pretty much all I had to do because Jacob and Bella used to be very good friends when they were young and it’s the first time they’ve seen in other in quite a while when she moves back to Forks. He instantly has huge crush on her and cannot leave her alone, so that’s basically all I had to bring to life for Twilight.

    CS: The production itself, they say it wasn’t intentionally done to have a woman director, a woman writer, but in the notes I’ve been reading, it kind of was. Was it irrelevant by the time you guys were producing it or, for lack of a better term, did it feel like it had a woman’s touch?

    LAUTNER: I think for Katherine it doesn’t have to do anything whatsoever. Katherine has just shown in her past, with 13 and Lords of Dogtown and now this she is a professional at relating to the young. She has so much energy she is infectious. She brings the best out of us. She has such a creative imagination and that’s what Twilight needs is to take this book that is in words and bring it to life visually for the fans so they can see on the big screen what been on their minds the whole time they’ve been reading the story. I just think Katherine was the best choice we could have chosen do direct it.

    LEFEVRE: And her history is a production designer and so she does have exactly that. She does have an appreciation for the visual. And this was a world that was so specific on the page and needed to be brought to life exactly as it was written and needed somebody who could read the book and the script and have that intense visual. I don’t know. Maybe a female made a difference there ““ maybe having a female imagination helped in the visualizing.

    GATHEGI: We have good imaginations too.

    LEFEVRE: You do??? Someone told me you think also. Is that true?

    (Laughs)

    CS: Everyone says you can get though this in a week but one page in her book and one page in a script, you have X number of pages have to cut. As well, some people got on this film without seeing a script, they just latched on to it. Can you tell me a little bit about A) Did you see the script before you came on and then B) What was important to Stephenie in your characters that she wanted to be sure she got in within the running time of the movie?

    GATHEGI: I’ll try to go fast. I did not see a script when I auditioned. I just saw the sides ““ which is a scene that my character was in and I was not into it because I could tell it was an other worldly project and that was not my thing.

    I’m really not a vampire fan.

    When I met Katherine and had a great audition with Katherine I wanted to work with her and when I found out they wanted me to play the part then I picked up the books and I went, now this is not your traditional vampire story. She’s turned it upside down. This is an amazing story. It’s a romance set in the world of vampires. I absolutely want to be a part of this. I’m in love with this. What was the second part of the question?

    CS: What she wanted to retain?

    GATHEGI: And like you said, it was a 500 page book condensed into a two hour movie so I think for our characters, the nomads, we are the antagonists. There is no movie without conflict and I think that we’re not introduced in the book until page 300’s so in the movie for dramatic purposes I think it was important that they showed we exist before we exist in the books so the impending doom is there kind of a parallel story with the love story so you know there are some things about to go down.

    LEFEVRE: I think it’s exactly the story of the book just condensed. Whatever is different is only different for the purposes of time. For the purposes of condensing the story. There is nothing that I can think of that is really far away from what Stephenie wrote. It’s all Stephenie’s stuff. And if it is contorted in any way in order to make it fit into a two hour movie, it’s still Stephenie’s world and still things she wrote, they are just condensed or rearranged slightly.

    GATHEGI: And I’ll add to that condensed or rearranged slightly ““ if anything is different it’s movie making. It’s not a perfect science. There are certain things like locations and budgetary things and the sun is shining so you literally have to move the location, so maybe differences in that way but other than that, the attempt and the success of the attempt is very good.

    CS: {To Taylor] Did you read the script?

    LAUTNER: No, I didn’t. Just the sides. What I actually did, Jacob’s character basically just gets introduced in Twilight and develops later in the series but what they did for my audition process is take just in quotes from the second and third books and made it into sides and it was very interesting for me and I knew immediately, I love intimate relationships between boy and girl, I’ve always been a romance fan so I loved the sides, loved the writing, hadn’t read the books yet and as soon as I got cast in the film, that is when I read the books and the script.

    CS: And now looking at this not just as a book, or a movie, you are looking at two or three, are you comfortable to signing your self on this trilogy? Any reservations about going on to do more?

    LEFEVRE: I had no reservations before I signed on. I read the first book right before my audition and read the other two before I was cast and I read the script before I agreed to do it but having read all three books and knowing that someone had chosen Katherine, it could have gone one of two ways. They could have gotten a director who was an action person for all the action sequences and the chase stuff, and they could have gone with somebody who was really great with that and had experience doing that and then just allowed them to do the romance story. But they didn’t. They went the other way. They knew that Katherine would be able to pull off the action stuff and gave her an amazing – Andy who was our stunt coordinator and second unit director was an incredible ““ so they made a great team in the two of them so they let Katherine really do what she does best is really have organic behavior and an intense story from young actors. So knowing they had made that choice, I trusted Summit implicitly with the series so for that reason there were no hesitations for me. The story was great and they picked Katherine.

    GATHEGI: And I can speak for them we would all love to do the subsequent films if there are any but there aren’t any right now. We’re going to see what happens in a week and a half.

    LEFEVRE: And we’re always the last to know anyway. The actors. Last on the phone chain.

    CS: The Internet seems to always know first.

    (Laughs)

  • Trailer Park: TWILIGHT Review

    By Christopher Stipp

    The Archives, Right Here

    I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

    I thought of all the different ways to review this movie and none of them seemed to be the right way to do it.

    You see, the overriding emphasis on what I want to get across about TWILIGHT is that this film was for sure, absolutely, positively not made for me. I am a 33 year old male who hasn’t read any of the books written by Arizona native Stephenie Meyer and have no inclination to read the series based on a vampire and his human ward/lady friend. But that’s alright, I would come to feel by the end of this movie, because of one fact alone: this is show business and this film is in the business of appealing to young ladies. It does it so well, in fact, that I dare say this should be the one movie on prepubescents’ lips come Monday morning as the one film that has defined their year.

    For the rest of us, however, this movie isn’t completely awful. Lord knows that the dialog is pretty bad, the characterization of our human love interest is beyond hackneyed and has been done before in countless other angst-y teenagers who hate life and whose parents just “don’t understand them” to say nothing of Bella Swan’s (Kristen Stewart) weirdly distant father who only adds to the movie’s forced narrative that this is, at its heart, a movie about teenage alienation. Like I said, it’s been done before in countless ways before in a lot better films. However, what I can say, like Edward tells Bella at the film’s prom scene that this all a rite of passage she deserves and needs to be a part of, is that this film is for the ladies.

    This movie is going to be the gateway drug (and, really, everyone out there who will find themselves sitting in the theater as Edward (Robert Pattinson) tells Bella that she’s his brand of heroin try not to completely fall out of your seat as your belly ripples with the giggles that are sure to ensue) for many disenfranchised teenage girls who don’t have a voice in the current cinema climate.

    The story of a young Bella who leaves the sunny and sandy shores of Scottsdale for the wet confines of Washington state, adjusting to life in a new high school and finding the boy of her dreams, only to find out he’s a member of the undead, is a relatively innocuous one. What we have here is a fairly basic flicks that has a shroud of vampirism tossed over it. And you know what? It’s a hoot. It’s a genuinely interesting film as we progress deeper into Meyer’s mythos, finding out what this brand of vampire is capable of doing, how they live, what makes them special, what threatens their existence, etc… It’s the exploration of these smaller bits that elevates this film from just being a shoddily produced cash-in.

    However, there are elements in the movie that would tell you otherwise.

    The wire work, effects and anything else that required even the slightest bit of modern 21st century technology to enhance was abhorrent. There are moments, for example in the penultimate fight sequence (and a sequence that answers the question of What would James Dean look like if he were in a roughshod martial arts film?)  between Edward and bad-boy James (Cam Gigandet) was nothing if but a comedic romp into bad action blocking. As well, Taylor Lautner’s performance as Jacob Black gets my Anthony Hopkins Award for racial blurring as that poor kid must have been given the C. Thomas Howell SOUL MAN treatment with enough self-tanner to make his olive skin turn a deep rusty hue in order to be the Native American representative of the werewolves. The aforementioned dialogue gets really, really bad at times and there’s even the sense that the players in this movie weren’t really given the ability to take Meyers’ work any higher than teenage melodrama. It’s more like a pilot for the CW at certain points in this film. And I cannot stress enough the grating attitude that Bella seems to carry with her throughout the film. My main issue with this is if you create a protagonist who is so easily pained with her own life that she projects it whenever possible how could anyone else, besides teenagers whose sole sphere of experience spans life in only two insular stages: inside of school and outside of school, identify with this woman? The answer, if you’re following close enough, is that you’re not. This book, this film, this series, speaks to some elusive trigger mechanism in young teenage ladies and it’s clear to anyone looking at the screen that unless you shop at Hollister or Hot Topic there’s not much you’re going to get out of this.

    There are  other members of the film, though, who actually do contribute to this film and elevate it just a little bit more than just a campy excuse to be doused in white flower. Peter Facinelli is one such actor and, to be quite honest, surprised me. His delivery isn’t stiff. He doesn’t lower his head and look forward to talk like some members of his vampy family. He speaks normally and acts, literally, as if he’s a vampire but just happens to live in a human’s world. Dare I say it I would have rather followed his story more than I wanted to follow everyone else’s. Rachelle Lefevre, one of the other “bad” vampires of this film, is a delight. She’s actually quite alluring and plays her role in a way that makes you feel a) like she could treat your neck like a piece of skirt steak and you would let her willingly and b) she is able to project a hint of evil without being obnoxious.

    In all, TWILIGHT is going to make millions off the backs of young girls who have been in need of a DARK KNIGHT for themselves. Honestly, I couldn’t be happier for them. This film does not try to be all things to all people, it does not want me to like it nor does it try too hard to, it hits the right emotional notes of those in its targeted sights and there is no way you could walk out of that film thinking that there is no way an audience could love that film because when you consider that in the land of show business this is one property that knows its market.